Phunware provides companies and governments with complete mobile ecosystem amid coronavirus pandemic

Offers fully integrated enterprise cloud platform for mobile Multiscreen-as-a-Service platform offering includes software development kits, vertical solutions, a mobile application framework, and data products Launched Pandemic Response Solutions for healthcare workers and governments dealing with coronavirus What Phunware does: Phunware Inc (NASDAQ:PHUN), which launched in 2009, provides a fully integrated enterprise cloud platform for mobile that provides products, solutions, data, and services for brands, companies, and governments. The company’s Multiscreen-as-a-Service (MaaS) offerings include engagement, management, and monetization initiatives that help the world’s most respected brands create category-defining mobile experiences. The platform is also targeted at four other verticles: Healthcare, Smart Cities, Corporate Campus, and Political Advocacy. The platform is currently largely focused on providing solutions to healthcare workers and cities confronting the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis fallout.  The Austin, Texas-based company also operates PhunCoin and Phun, cryptocurrencies that let users monetize their digital identity. Phunware's Software Development Kits (SDKs) include location-based services, mobile engagement, content management, messaging, advertising, loyalty and rewards (PhunCoin and Phun), and analytics, as well as a mobile application framework of pre-integrated iOS and Android software modules for building an in-house or channel-based mobile application and vertical solutions. Since inception, Phunware has created more than 2.5 billion Phunware IDs representing mobile devices connected to networks. Phunware’s Knowledge Graph uses machine learning and proprietary algorithms to curate over five terabytes of data every day from approximately one billion of these active devices each month. Phunware’s data offerings enable brands to more accurately reach their target consumers. How is it doing: Like thousands of companies worldwide, Phunware is doing its part to help medical providers and governments with their communication as well as data- and citizenry-management challenges as they grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. The company recently launched its mobile Pandemic Response Solutions for Healthcare and Smart Cities, which is powered by its Multiscreen-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform and its patented location-based services. The system can be deployed on a native mobile application within days for both iOS and Android. The Pandemic Response Solutions platform allows both cities and healthcare systems to quickly distribute to the general public or workers crucial real-time information, safety protocols, emergency operations, and much more. The Smart City Pandemic Response Solution platform leverages location-based services software to help governments identify, locate, and engage employees and citizens in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.  Users can tag locations of businesses, provide more information on operating hours, track and prevent harmful exposure (such as the enforcement of social distancing and quarantine policies), and coordinate information sharing and messaging. The platform also offers non-COVID services like finding hotels and getting air and water quality reports. The Healthcare Pandemic Response Solution platform, which has been deployed in New York at one of the largest teaching hospitals in the US, is also built upon the company’s location-based technologies.  It offers medical workers access to navigation capabilities at their hospitals, on-site mobile directories, and push notifications to better coordinate patients as well as clinicians, who are sometimes working at unfamiliar facilities.  Users can get notifications that route them to designated parking facilities, test sites, treatment facilities, or along specified paths. It also offers telemedicine and contract-tracing capabilities as it can monitor device locations, including both real-time and historical lookbacks.  The company has also started offering a new telemedicine mobile solution for new and existing healthcare customers of its MaaS platform amid a dramatic drop in in-office patient visits during the pandemic. The improvements include streamlined reimbursement that keeps referrals in-network to help reduce patient leakage while enhancing revenues. Phunware also launched a National Ventilator Registry so that clinicians can have complete visibility of existing resources and locate the lifesaving equipment. The US has more than 160,000 ventilators while more are being manufactured and sometimes imported.  The company is looking ahead too to when workers, many of whom have been working from home for a few months, start to trickle back into their workspaces and offices as states lift stay-at-home restrictions.   It has developed and will soon release a new mobile app called Gather Safe to help its existing MaaS customers to best manage return-to-work strategies. Gather Safe’s capabilities include the collection of key data points on health, habits, and risk among individuals, teams, and groups to create health profiles.  The app is akin to the Smart City Pandemic Response Solution as it also offers tracing and messaging, real-time policy updates, and management of social-distancing rules, among other services.   Aside from the company’s current focus on the coronavirus pandemic, it has been building partnerships with other companies and adding new MaaS customers. Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO) subsidiary Meraki now features Phunware’s MaaS location-based services app in its digital marketplace that provides cloud-controlled WiFi, routing, and security from a centralized dashboard. Phunware also struck recently a partnership with Diversified, a technology solutions provider, to offer category-defining mobile experiences for businesses globally. It will also offer healthcare customers of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (NYSE:HPE) a mobile digital front door so that they can better engage their patients and manage staff at a lower cost. And Parkview Health, a major hospital chain in Ohio, just signed up for the digital front door service as well.   In early 2020, Phunware launched its MaaS location-based services at two of the largest luxury casino hotels in the US, giving the owner a better way to engage, manage, and monetize its guests. Phunware also added its first national railway customer for its mobile corporate campus navigation service. Phunware so far this year has added some notable customers for its audience engagement platform that enables brands to build custom audiences and deliver targeted media to optimize engagement. These include Samsung, Live Nation, Ticketmaster, House of Blues, AEG, Madison Square Garden, Metrolink, Coast Electric, Census 2020, the University of Pennsylvania, and Truthfinder. In a US presidential election year (hopefully), the company is also marketing the audience engagement platform to US political organizations, campaign managers, and advocacy groups to reach targeted audiences in congressional districts and meet campaign objectives.  The successful launch of the MaaS platform allowed Phunware to close the first quarter of 2020, which ended March 31, with a nearly $11 million backlog even as the coronavirus shutdown began to kick in. Phunware reported net revenue of $2.6 million with platform subscriptions and services contributing 90%. Looking ahead, Phunware expects to see flat to slightly lower net revenue in the second quarter of 2020, which it believes will mark “a bottom for the year” and a net revenue base on which it will “reaccelerate its growth sequentially” during both the final two quarters of the year. Inflection points: Roll out new mobile return-to-work app Gather Safe in June 2020 Accelerate growth in both 3Q and 4Q 2020 Long term, dominate the intersection of mobile, cloud, big data, and blockchain What the boss says: “During extremely challenging times, we are successfully executing our operational model and business strategy to become the premier digital transformation source for mobile initiatives worldwide,” Alan Knitowski, CEO and co-founder of Phunware has said.